Football is ridiculous and ruined

[Raymond De Waard 0]

I''m 24 years old............not a veteran by any means i know...................but i''ve been watching Norwich play since i was 8 and man hasn''t football changed so much in that space of time.  I remember us selling Chris Sutton for £5m and thinking that we must be the richest club in the world back then (i was young, lol!)

But with everything that is going on in football nowadays the game is going down the pan, and it''s clubs like Norwich and the teams around us and below us who are really going to suffer in the next few years and we will unfortunatley see a few more clubs go the ''Wimbledon way'' and just go out of business.  And that is the saddest thing to ever happen to a fan of that football club.

When i see Ronaldo go to Real for £80m and see the other players they have been signing, along with the millions and millions of £ at the disposal of Mark Hughes at Man City i just think why on earth are the FA and FIFA and the PFA and every other footballing body just sitting back and allowing this to happen!? 

Why have they not: -

• Brought in wage caps (so the likes of Ronaldo can only be on a maximum of say £50k a week, which is still absurd for a footballer)
• Stop the foreign tycoons coming over using Englisghfootball clubs as play-things because tehy have so much money they don''t know what to do with it!?  Imagine all the worth while causes that money could go towards rather than a football club with an immense amount of greed?  This goes for Liverpool, Man UTD, Chelsea, Villa, Man City, Pompey, Real Madrid and so on.................All the clubs with foreign owners who use the clubs as ''play-things''.  What will any of these clubs do if these mega-rich owners pull-out?  They won''t be self-dependant, they will have to sell all the players to get them off the wage bill as they won''t be able to pay the stupid money the players are currently on and then you will see well-run, self dependant football clubs like Hull winning the Premier League!
• Why is more money not put into the lower leagues, instead of pumping the millions into the premiership!?  Obviosuly the standard of football in the PREM is incredibel comapred to the English lower leagues, but what an extra £250,000 a season would do to help League 1 and 2 sides stay afloat!

Also, i was watching the greatest 150 Norwich goals DVD with my brother-in-law the other day and how much we laughed at the goal celebration in the Norwich v Ipswich match in the late 90''s at Carrow Road between Fleck, Eadie and Johnson.  The cheeky poses of Flecky when he scored and just the general banter and laughs that you used to get from the players during a match!  Where are the characters in football now!?  This is why when we get a Iwan, Dublin, Mackay we love them!  because you know they are not a proffessional footballer just for the money, they wan''t and love to play football and give a damn about the club!

I hate looking at our team now!  Where on earth are the characters!?  It goes for the whole game acros the world!  Where are the Gazza''s!?  The press have a huge part to play in this nowadays too, when Stephen Ireland/Joey Barton (can''t remeber which one?) pulled there shorts and pants down and revealed there bear backside to the opposite fans..............that''s quality entertainment!  A relationship/banter between the players and supporters.  We simply do not have that any more!  It''s a crying shame!

And what did that Man City player get?  A barrage of abuse and crtisism!?  Football has become far too serious............a serious business which is slower becoming less and less fun!  I will always adore Norwich and Love football, but it''s not the same as it used to be........not by a long shot!

[Raymond De Waard 0]

Does anybody have a view on my above post?  I just wondered if others thought the same way i did about teh ''fun'' in football not being like it used to be?

[HighTower 0]

Words from my mouth, so true and so well said imo

[tribes 0]

[quote user="crabman84"]Does anybody have a view on my above post?  I just wondered if others thought the same way i did about teh ''fun'' in football not being like it used to be?[/quote]You would feel a lot better if you were a Burnley supporter." Football is not what it used to be" is a statement that has been iterated by fans for so long as I can remember and that goes back to the 1950''s, but you have a point in that wages etc have now gone past what is sensible.

[Romantic 0]

I agree on the whole. It''s all pretty tainted. I find light relief from press conferences by the likes of Stuart Pearce but it''s all a bit few and far between these days isn''t it?

[Downloads 35]

Brought in wage caps - Because everyone has to agree, you can''t just do it, employment laws etc. Correct me if i am wrong but in rugby it''s agreed as a collective, the players have willingly signed up to the caps. The trouble is when you haven''t had them before, telling someone who earns £120k a week (of which there are many players now) that they are going to earn 50k isn''t going to go down well and nor would you expect it too. 

Foreign owners - Because at the end of the day these are businesses and you can''t say foreigners can''t invest. Governments only ever get involved themselves when it comes to energy and banks and they have proper power. They would have to be delisted and owned by individuals who wern''t prepared to sell and were English.

No money for lower leagues - Because wrongly the premiership has all the power and the pull too and they aren''t going to share much more than they do now. They increased the amount to Championship clubs this season, unfortunately we aren''t there. There is the underlying threat that if lower league clubs get together and make their package more ineteresting, then the Premier league will ban promotion to the premiership. This happened when the Championship were considering plans to not have draws.

Unfortunately we can''t go back now, we are too far down the line, we are going to have to just live with this.

I agree about the characters in the game though. I think a lot of creativity is beaten out of our youngsters now. It''s like they are trained to do things the proper way rather than allowing personality onto the pitch. I love to watch youngsters dribbling with the ball thinking they can take everyone on, why do they lose that as they go through the ranks - countries like Argentine, Spain, Brazil and Portugal etc seem to embrace it.

Anyway, just my two peneths.

[Yellow Wal 314]

Wage capping will always be a very difficult thing to implement and agree.What the footbasll authorities can do to improve things is to introduce squad limitation so that the richest clubs cannot have a monopoly  of all the top players. I would suggest that it applies to players over the age of 21 only, so that when a young player becomes 21 the club either has to give him a contract or let him go to find another club. If they give him a contract they would be forced to either sell or cancel the contract (with appropriate compensation) of another squad member who would then be free to find another club.The other immediate step could be to ban all loans except emergency loans (what the system was brought in for in the first place).Ask yourself this: If lower league clubs did not loan the young, unneeded or players a club wanted to put in the shop window, what would the players and the clubs do with 70 or so players on their books?The loan system has turned into a farce with the richest club using the system to make themselves even richer at the expense of the lower clubs. For example David Bentley was sold for M£7.5

after never starting a Premiership match at Arsenal. Norwich City coached him, gave him exposure, paid his wages and priced him out of our reach before he was finally sold giving Arsenal the nice fee for him. And what did we get out of it?  

[jimidack 0]

Wage capping, the only way could be if the league set a limit for a team. Basically set their playing budget for the teams, so if they want to, they can spend 200k a week on Ronaldo but that would be a serious dent in their weekly budget. I believe its a similar process in American Football that a team £X amount every season and can only have players you can fit within that budget. It would stop many teams snapping up the worlds best talent because they can offer the biggest salaries, purely because they would have to make room for lesser paid players, such as academy players and lower league up and comers.But as people have already pointed out getting a universal agreement would have it''s own problems, the bigger clubs wouldn''t like it and would try to form their own European Super League away from UEFA and FIFA and want no part of being capped.I do also think that the biggest sides having huge amount of debts is ridiculous, Real Madrid may be causing their own problems in the long run by buying the worlds top stars for stupid money, they don''t have the actual money but they have another loan (or remortgage on their stadium)  to funds such elaborate moves just purely adding to their debt. If it fails (which in a way I really hope it does) then they will be in huge trouble or if UEFA step in as they have suggested they may do then Real could find themselves in a pickle.These are just two things that bug me about todays football culture!